An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Thursday, May 24, 2012

History Haunted the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever

A fanciful 19th Century engraving of the purchase of Manhattan Island.

On
this day in 1626 what has been called the greatest real estate deal in
history went down. But the real winner in the deal is not the one you
have been told about.

Due to a simplistic account in a 19th Century popular reader, almost any
American will tell you that Manhattan Island was bought by the Dutch
from local Indians for “$24 in beads and trinkets.” Those with
especially acute memories might recall the alleged sharpie who hoodwinked the natives with his paltry offering was Peter
Minuit, Governor of the North
American colony owned by the DutchWest Indies Company.

There are several things wrong with this version. First and
foremost is that the trade goods Minuit offered were not the trade trifles
mentioned, but a selection of metal tools and implements including axe heads,
knives, awls, needles, cast iron kettles, as well as cloth. They were
valued by Minuit at 60 silver guilders a significant sum.
Depending on who is doing the reckoning and how inflation over nearly four
centuries is figured, that would be worth more than $1000 in today’s
cash.

But as one historian points out, the value of the items to the natives was
probably much more than the actual monetary value. Most of these items
had been virtually unobtainable, although a few had found their way ashore
from other European ships or have been traded down from New England or far
away New France. A historian described it as a significant “high-end
technology transfer, handing over equipment of enormous usefulness.”

But it was the natives who
Minuit dealt with that may have been the real sharpies. He assumed he was
doing business with the Lenape; a powerful
and extensive tribe that held sway over what is now the Delaware Valley
including much of modern New Jersey
and over the area around the mouth of the Hudson River including
Manhattan and much of Long Island. They were a sedentary people
engaged in extensive agriculture and both coastal and inland fishery, including
the harvesting of oysters. Relatively large villages relocated within the
range every year or so, returning to previous sites when the land rejuvenated
itself.

Evidently the local Lenape, however, were not using Manhattan at the time the
Dutch arrived. Instead, they made sort of a sub-lease agreement with the
much smaller Canarsie tribe who shared some of Long Island with them and
a dozen other small bands. The Canarsie, who were harvesting oysters and
gardening on the island could hardly believing their good
fortune They gladly sold the Dutch what didn’t belong to them and retreated to
Long Island with what they must have considered a fortune.

A previous governor had established Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip
of the island the year before. Minuit now felt secure enough in his sale
to begin settlement of a new colonial capital Nieuw-Amsterdam. Eventually the Lanape, who became the chief partners of the new
colony in the fur trade, complained about the Dutch squatting on their
land and another purchase had to be arranged. The exact price paid in
this second deal is lost to history, but the Lenape likely did pretty well in
trade goods themselves.

The fates of all parties to the deal were unhappy.

In 1631 Minuit was fired by the Dutch West India company for failing to meet
expectations for the fur trade and was accused of skimming accounts for his own
benefit. Enraged, he returned to Europe and offered himself to the Swedes,
an ascending power eager to get into North American colonization. In 1638 he returned as governor general of New Sweden and
established Fort Christiana new modern day Wilmington, Delaware.
He was killed later the same year on a return voyage to recruit more
settlers. He sailed via the Caribean to pick up a load of tobacco
to make the journey profitable for the company and perished in a hurricane
near the island of St. Christopher. His colony lasted a dozen more
years until a later Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant conquered iit n 1655.

The Canarsie, one of thirteen small tribes on
Long Island, allied themselves with the much more powerful Mohawks from
the mainland for protection. They lived in relative harmony with the
Dutch until a later governor, William
Kieft, launched a war on local
tribes. A massacre of the village of Pavonia united all of the
tribes in a general uprising in 1643. The ensuing war was devastating to
both settlers and the tribes. Peter Stuyvesant eventually
negotiated a peace. Many Canarsie converted to Christianity during the
period of peace and continued to farm and fish in the area.

The Dutch persuaded the 13 tribes of Long Island not to pay tribute to their
traditional protectors, the Mohawks. In 1655 a large Mohawk war party
invaded Long Island and massacred most of the local tribal residents.

A remnant of the Canarsie later sold most of their remaining land to the
British, after they seized New Amsterdam. Small numbers continued to live
and farm in rural Brooklyn into the 19th Century. A unit of Canarsie
volunteers served the Civil War. Eventually descendents of the tribe
became absorbed by the white community and the tribe disappeared into the mist
of history.

The much larger Lenape at least persist as a people. Their culture was
much disrupted by the arrival of the Dutch, Swedes, and the English.
In order to obtain much desired trade goods, they abandoned much of their
traditional agricultural and fishery based economy to pursue the fur
trade. This took them deep into hostile territory dominated by the Mohawk
and other Iroquoian people. By the late 18th Century
pressure from the Iroquois and expanding European settlement forced most major
bands to re-settle west of the Allegany Mountains in what is now western
Pennsylvania and along the Ohio River. Remnant bands in the
east were mostly absorbed by other tribes or by neighboring white settlements.

After the signing of the Treaty of Easton in 1758, most the Lenape were
forced to move west out of their lands in Delaware, New Jersey, eastern New
York, and eastern Pennsylvania into what is today known as Ohio. A
large number of Lenape were converted by the Moravians, a German
pietistic sect that practiced pacifism. These “praying
Indians” settled west of Ft. Pitt along the Ohio River with their
missionaries.

In the French and Indian Wars more
warlike bands allied themselves with the French and were present at the siege
of Ft. Pitt.

During the American Revolution bands of the tribe, by then generally
known as the Delaware, split allegiances between the British and the
colonists. Several large bands relocated to the Sandusky to be
closer to the British stronghold of Ft. Detroit. Others scouted
for the Americans, or in the case of the Praying Indians tried to remain
neutral. Coshocton was the main town of the Delaware friendly to
the colonists. They hoped to form an all Indian state within the infant
republic. But after their chief, White Eyes was killed, probably
by American militiamen, many of the warriors from Coshocton joined their
kinsmen with the British.

American Colonel Daniel Brodhead
led an expedition out of Fort Pitt and in 1781 destroyed Coshocton. Surviving
residents fled to the north to the British. The next year the peaceful
Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten was attacked by Pennsylvania
militia. At least 96 men, women and children were massacred.

Various Delaware bands were caught up in the continuing fierce warfare along
the Ohio frontier after the Revolution. Some took up arms again with the
British in the War of 1812.After the capture of Ft.
Detroit in that war, northern Delaware bands, including some of the Moravians
relocated to what is now western Ontario.

Most of the remaining American Delaware ceded their lands in Ohio in the Treaty
of St. Mary’s in 1814. Bands took up lands in Indiana and Missouri.
In 1829 yet another treaty, the Treaty of James Fork pushed the tribe
yet further west. In exchange for the Indiana and Missouri lands they
received grants in Kansas.

The Delaware
became active as guides and trappers in the trans-Mississippi west and
frequently served as scouts for the Army. They were prominent in
the Seminole Wars and were among those with John Charles Frèmont when
he entered California during the Mexican War. Later they
would be guides for emigrant trains to the west.

Despite
loyal service the Delaware were again pushed from their lands. Most
relocated to Indian Territory by 1860. They were forced to buy
lands from the Cherokee. In 1979 The Bureau of Indian Affairs ceased
to recognize the Oklahoma Delaware as a separate tribe and began to
count them as Cherokee. That decision was overturned in 1996. A
challenge by the Cherokee to the re-instatement caused a see-sawing legal
battle with the tribe stripped of recognition again and then having it
restored. As of 2009 they have had tribal status and the same year
reorganized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act with a tribal government
of its own.

Other small bands of Lenape or Delaware are scattered from New Jersey to Wisconsin
but have no formal recognition. In Ontario decedents of the Lenape of
Ohio still live on four reservations.